The Year Ahead

I have already shown you January and December pages for the year ahead. Check back in November for their previews, if you want. I'm ready for 2013. I've got the latest quilt with a top almost finished. Can't wait to show you the fun colors it uses. But today's post is scrapbook pages for the coming year. This worked out SO WELL for me last year, only took me less than 15 minutes a month to scrapbook the whole month because all I had to do was print the photos, crop and glue them on, then write the journaling. My simplified approach works well for me and helped me get a lot more quilting done and get my son's mission album completed as well as make some good progress on LittleBuddy's album, as well as live real life . . . priorities. 

I also have to say, 2012 was a hard year in many ways for our family and I don't see 2013 changing a lot that way. However, what I've realized about scrapbooking as a hobby is that is forces you to look for the good, and to ask yourself, How do I want to remember this moment? There was a good article in Meridian, an online magazine, that spoke to my heart this week. We are all conductors - for good or for bad. We can add positive energy and warmth to a room or suck it dry and be cold-hearted and negative. I want to be positive. I do believe that life has wonderful moments mixed in the hard times and I'm grateful my scrapbooks help me see the whole picture of my life, for I'm not afraid to write the truth in my journaling but I also can choose to focus more on the positive. I want my posterity to know that in spite of the challenges we walked forward with faith and did our best to create a life of love and service and meaning.

Here is Feb. The font for each month is the Token alphabet from Close To My Heart. I like to pick a couple of things to be consistent with. This year I used neutral backgrounds and this font as my common elements. The hearts on the side are embossed in Chocolate ink then Tulip ink is sponged over the embossing. Easy but messy :-O 

Most all of the papers are no longer available for purchase. Again, my goal was to use up what I have, purchase nothing new to create this, and I met the goal. (LOL - I could do this for years to come. . . there's a lot in my stash!) However, if you use Studio J, all previous papers from earlier catalogs are still available which is nice if there's some papers you really loved and didn't get.

 March's pages use some of my favorite products. This was a former CTMH kit, so the pre-printed stickers were convenient and easy to use. Canvas buttons, which can be stamped on, were perfect for adding a shamrock or two.  I also like using pre-cut shaped pages. If you wanted to, you could also cut these out on the Cricut. And last, but not least, the FlipFlaps. These add more photos to your pages without taking up more space. I LOVE these, and did purchase more last year to use on my children's pages, as I have used up every one I've ever purchased.

April's pages I have mixed feelings about. The truth is, pastel pages are fun to make but don't generally work with the photos I take. So, there's a chance I may make a new page for April, like I did for last August, which was in an aqua and pastel yellow color scheme. I think, eventually I'll just have a baby album already to go with pastels, haha . . . .  However, there were some fun items I used here also. . . multiple ribbons added some great texture, the bottle caps and patterned brads as well as grid paper for either journaling or backgrounds for photos.

May's pattern is from the book, Make It From The Heart, that CTMH sells. I used several of the patterns for my 2013 year. Its so easy to just copy a layout design and choose your own papers without having to dream up the basic layout. Here I used stitching and some fun embellishments as well to coordinate with the Dotty For You paper pack which I love. Journaling will be on some vellum with lines on it I probably bought ten years ago and found in my drawer.

 June's is my favorite of all my pages. I used one of my Mom's Cricut cartridges to cut the sunshine. The cloud and flowers are from the Artiste cartridge. She let me borrow them when she was on her cruise and I just cut a bunch of random shapes and had fun using some of them here.The patterned paper is retired from MyMind's Eye. The colors here say "happy summer," to me!

 Knowing that Littlebuddy is going to Philmont this year in July prompted these woodsy pages. I know the month will find all of us hiking or biking and getting outdoors more, so I focused on that rather than the usual patriotic pages I make in July. Its fun to try and mix and shake things up a bit. These papers are from a CTMH paper pack. The Chocolate ric rac seemed to be a good fit here as well as the retro Chocolate rub-ons and hopefully this year we won't have the terrible fires and get to make s'mores in the back yard with our own chocolate again.

 In August, we're going to California for a family reunion. Its my parents' fiftieth anniversary and with all the cousins around we're sure to have a lot of laughs. We're planning on doing something Disney, so I've added embellishments representing that, and the beach will be part of the mix as well. Its also the month LittleBuddy will start high school. (Can I really be that old - he's my baby!) So, I needed something that would work well for his first day photos as well. Let's see if I can get him to laugh on that day?!  I tried to show that the journaling can be tucked behind the largest photo. I still like to make interactive pages.

September looks pretty blank, but my plan is to fill in the insides with photos, leaving just a small border of the background page around them. There's a spot for journaling and some patterned paper to use as an accent, but it'll be Fall in full bloom here and I wanted to capture that feeling with the colors I used and leaves I stamped and cut with the Cricut as well as the green frames cut apart to add interest.

October's pages again use a large Cricut cut shape. I like to mix papers from several kits and here are papers from three different ones. I found these patterned brads at the local Walmart a couple of years ago in their Clearance racks. Finally found the right place to use them. And there's just something about gingham ribbon that I love. It brings any page a bit of a homey accent which I like. I have lots of this green patterned paper. I've used it for my grandmother's life history book and you saw it last year in April's pages. Adding purple and orange and dark brown/black gave it a whole new feel, and used up a little more!

 November is the first page I started on when designing 2013's pages. I had this idea in my mind, to punch lots of holes in the side of some grid paper I had for the journaling. I also wanted to use different Cricut cut shapes for photos and accents. The scallop actually lifts up for more photos as well. This is also a color scheme I really like - Barn Red, Crystal Blue, Bamboo, Black, Honey, and Kraft/Desert Sand. It was fun to find a compass rub-on in my stash as well since I had some compass paper I wanted to use here also.

Feel free to copy any of the ideas you see here or adapt them to be your own. You know that's what I would do. Happy Scrapping Everyone! Keep it simple, keep it colorful and make good memories in this coming New Year!